Last week we found out our grades for the first midterm, and many students were disappointed with their performance (I am not speaking for myself here as I am perfectly satisfied). So the professor agreed to calm the students down by letting them come up with alternative solutions of how the exams should be graded. However, the catch was that the solution had to be "reasonable" and most importantly, there had to be a 100% class agreement.
Personally, I used a combination of accommodation and avoidance to handle the chaos during the decision-making activity. I was accommodative because the final decision had a greater impact on my classmates than me (as I received a perfect score). So I would agree to almost anything the class would vote for. I have to admit I did not like the “multiple multiple” choice part of the exam, and I am glad everyone voted to change it to a more manageable multiple choice section. I also used avoidance because I did not believe we could get a 100% approval from the class given everyone’s ambitions and priorities. Almost always, there was one person who had a different opinion and would screw everyone else up. Nevertheless, I am satisfied with the result we have achieved.
Given the time constraint, I think our general strategy to achieve the goal was working well. Despite some drawbacks, we were actually able to complete the task successfully. I believe in the end, when the time came to the final vote, many students in the class used compromise as they realized that getting something is better than getting nothing. In this case, an option of the curve, the lowest exam grade being dropped and a different version of “multiple multiple” choice questions is a better deal than not having anything at all.
2 comments:
I would never expect to be able to have the opportunity to "fix" a test and at the same time alter the results of my test score. I did not score 100 on the test but i am very satisfied with my grade and can relate to you when you just agreed with everyone else or didn't really say much as a suggestion. The class was so hectic that we only came to an agreement cause it was that or nothing. After a while, i figured that just because i did good on this test doesn't mean that i'll do good on the others so why not do something that will make my life easier and i offered some ideas. Most accepted my idea and i was pleased because i got my way but in the end, with the confusion and chaos, we miraculously came to a 100% class agreement...something i didn't think was possible either.
Yeah, I believe many students were compromised in this vote as well - no one wants to be the minority with a different direction. When it comes to voting, I think that the most important thing is to keep the privacy for the voters. For example we could write down our decisions on a piece of paper (without name on it) and only prof kurpris can read the decisions. By doing this, no one will be forced to compromise.
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